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Dessert

Apple-bread

Apple Bread is a baked loaf made from apples, Indian meal, egg, butter, salt, optional sugar, and liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple-bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. Combine the chopped apples with the cooled Indian meal in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg and butter together until creamy, then add to the mixture along with the salt.

  3. If using sour apples, mix in the sugar.

  4. Add enough rich milk for sweet apples or cold water for sour apples to form a stiff dough.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide moisture and fruity flavor that bakes into the bread.
Indian meal (cornmeal)
Forms the bulk of the bread and sets into a firm crumb when baked.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness to help hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the bread and balances the tartness of sour apples.

The step that matters

Bake immediately until golden brown. Once the dough is mixed, the leavening action and moisture start to work right away, so delaying the bake can leave the loaf dense. Baking promptly also lets the surface brown properly through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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